Although the Sustainability Institute is still very young, work it has done is already being recognised via recent awards. The most recent was the Best Environmental Project Award for 2002 from the South African Planning Institute which is the professional association of practicing urban and regional planners in South Africa. ARG Design, which is the architectural firm commissioned by the Sustainability Institute and Lynedoch Development to do the design work for the Lynedoch EcoVillage, represented the Lynedoch team at the award ceremony. ARG Design and the Sustainability Institute have worked together closely for three years on these designs. Expertise from all over the world was accessed, but in the final analysis it was a design that was rooted in the specific conditions of the South African context. The end result of this work is presented in the section on Lynedoch on this website.
The second award was the Eddie Schulze Award for Best Contribution to Research Standards for Africa which was awarded by Research International which is an assocation of research professionals. This was an award for work done by Prof Mark Swilling and his colleague Bev Russel from Social Surveys over the last four years. This was a research project that aimed to document the size and scope of the non-profit sector in South Africa. The South African study was linked to a wider global study of the non-profit sector throughout the world coordinated by the Centre for Non-profit Studies at Johns Hopkins University. The results of the study were presented in July at an international conference in Cape Town convened by the International Society for Third Sector Research. A book entitled the The Scope and Size of the South African Non-Profit Sector authored by Mark Swilling and Bev Russel was released at this conference. Anyone interested in obtaining copies can contact the Institute at info@sustainabilityinstitute.net.